1st from taven for me. the death ship, the story of an american sailor, b. traven, 1934, forward by john anthony west, saugerties, new york, april, 1991there is song of an american sailor on a white page...forget the name of those things...stanzas? i dunno. the thing is 12-lines long, broken up into 3 groups of 4. ooga booga.now stop that crying, honey dear,the jackson square remains still here in sunny new orleans in lovely louisianashe thinks me buried in the sea,no longer does she wait for me in sunny new orleans in lovely louisiana.the death ship is it i am in,all i have lost, nothing to win so far off sunny new orleans so far off lovely louisiana.story begins:the first bookwe had brought, in the holds of the s.s. tuscaloosa, a full cargo of cotton from new orleans to antwerp.the tuscaloosa was a fine ship, an excellent ship, true and honest down to the bilge. first-rate freighter. not a tramp. made in the united states of america. oh, good old new orleans, with your golden sun above you and your merry laughter within you! so unlike the frosty towns of the puritans with their sour faces of string-savers.okee dokee then, as the good doctor said (the last voyage, 29 apr 78)...onward & upwardtime place scene setting*time is during prohibition...no definitive year as yet*the place is the s.s. tuscaloosa to start...various locations on board, the foc'sle...where his berthing is located*the tuscaloosa has left new orleans, arrives in antwerp*antwerp, belgium, where the tuscaloosa makes port*a house w/a gilded front*the room of a pretty girl*from the streets of antwerp, to a police station*a railroad station...train...to a very small town police station*meadows, other locations on the border w/the netherlands*the american counsel, rotterdam, netherlands*spain, barcelona, seville to cadiz*trains in france, depots...a paris prison*docks...boulogne, france*barcellona*the yorikke, the death ship, a steamer...sounds like one of those old schoolbuses you might see on the streets of tijuana, multi-colored*our hero spends four months on board the yorikke*the chamber of horrors...one of two holds on the yorikke under lock/key...so, rumors, bones, former crew so forth so oncharacters*our hero, the main character, an american sailor, an unnamed man, eye-narrator, he describes himself as a deck hand, a democrat. by page 33, we learn his nickname, gerry...and not until page 67 do we learn his name gerald gales...he is from sconsin (wisconsin)...may it do ya well...and he also abbreviates other american cities...chic...or was it chi...for chicago...cinc...for what must be cincinnati...we also learn he is the son of a sailor...that his mother may or may not be alive*honey...who may or may not be his girl in new orleans...or, the idea of a girl, or an idealized girl, or a name that stands for all girls waiting in new orleans.*2 colored boys to attend to our quarters*second mate, tuscaloosa*jolly crowd*a pretty girl in antwerp, belgium*the pretty girl's sick and ailing mother*slim, sorting through his things...time passages*the cook...burns the bacon*a flat (cop) police, antwerp, belgium*searchers at the police station*the high priest, top cop, police station*an interpreter*the high priest in charge of the very small town police station*a new cop...w/the interpreter*the hangman...who never comes*hundreds of mugs hanging around waiting to take a job*his holiness, the american counsel*a dame & a gent, fibby & flory...fibby is a...new york publisher maybe, involved w/stories anyhow.*flory has an aunt in new orleans, aunt sophronia*the penningtons...rivals of fibby & flory*a money exchange man*2 plainclothes men*the high priest, chief of police*a milk wagon driver...who has an uncle in america*this man, that woman, another man*2 guys on the docks, boulogne, france*mr jorgson...back home in sconsin...who gad a gas station for sale*minister of the prison (paris prison)*different officers*doctor, professor prisoner, chief warden, treasurer, another warden, 2 policemen, at the paris prison*the waiting room was crowded with people*a lady came in like a clap of thunder...we later learn the lady is none other than mrs. sally marcus, new york by way of bucharest married to:*mr reuben marcus, a new york banker*a clerk*mr grgrgrgrs, american counsel...paris*conductor...on the paris-toulouse express*2 more passengers*two gentlemen w/the previous conductor*other fellows: prisoners & wardens*a warden in charge...his sick wife & 3 little kids...his mother and his wife's mother*peasants*antoine, a frenchman peasant*a boche...german...p.o.w. wil'em...who worked hard*a shepherd*2 soldiers...officer in command, at the french fortifications w/the spanish border*the captain...officer...another young officer*2 soldiers w/bayonets fixed*special customs officer*spanish girls...wives of the customs officers*a cop who wakes him in spain to tell him it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain, a-gonne fall*man at the bakery who provides him bread*a man who happened along...who tells him about the communists being tortured/killed in the military prison*passengers at a pier*a salesman at a hardware store where he bought line, hooks*aunt lucinda, jetmore, kansas*the crew of the yorikke, initial first-impression of our hero, gerry gales...shark-hunters...the the 2nd engineer described as a pickpocket...at one point, "a negro brought in the supper"...but then no, a few lines later, simply a white man black from coal dust.*spainy, crew*stanislav, or "lavski," a coal-drag, the yorikke is his 4th death ship...and he explains shortly after meeting gales how to avoid death...so forth...explains how to use the winch to lift out the ashes to throw overboard*pippip...the name gales, our hero, gives to stanislav*helmond rigby, alexandria, egypt, the name our hero, gerald gales, signs on as...not wanting to use his real name on a death ship.*mr dils, is the second engineer on the yorikketime passages...comes early in the story, after our hero, the american sailor misses the tuscaloosa getting under weigh...he sits there imagining slim, going through his things...the cook, burning the bacona quote or twoi have learned that it is not the mountains that makes destiny, but the grains of sand and the little pebbles. (6)when living among baboons, do as the baboons do. (53)don't ever believe that kings were done with when the fathers of the country made a revolution. (58)it would have been a rare thing anyhow for an official to come upon an idea that is not provided for in the regulations. (71)the second book begins on page 119there is this before it begins:inscription over the crew's quarters of the death shiphe who enters here will no longer have existence;his name and soul have vanished and are gone for ever.of him there is not left a breathin all the vast world.he can never return, nor can he ever go onward; for where he stands there he must stay.no god knows him; and unknown he will be in hell. he is not day; he is not night. he is nothing and never.he is too great for infinity, too small for a grain of sand,which, however small, has its place in the universe.he is what has never beenand never thought.what do you do when you're 100-pages into the story and you realize you neglected to read the introduction?yeah...so you read the forward/introduction...and get a reader's take on the story plus some information. hi ho.a word phrase or two"to go cooking" is "to make friends with the crew"...and this applies t'would seem, to ships in port, crews in port, and sailors in search of a ship...or a handout from those on board ships...in port.folklore...sea folklore(117) may it do ya fine...a sailor shouldn't dream of fish or fishing. it's a bad dream for a sailor. it's unlucky for a sailor. a sailor shouldn't even think about fish. even when he's eating fish, he should eat it in the belief is it something else.some additional americana? folklorewhen our narrator explores an open barrel marked marmalade...in some other language...abysinnian maybe, he tastes "green copper in that marmalade. haven't they put pennies in the sauce? sure, they have. like mother did back home when she was cooking preserves for the long winter; when she wanted to keep the string beans in good color, she put in a penny. old norse custom i guess..." (227)a recurring themethe greatest disgrace is to fail to pay your debts and to go into bankruptcy. our hero, gerald gales, many times, yes sir, considers the debt european countries owe to the united states, this, war debt i take it...and he takes a dim view of these countries who have failed to pay their debt. reason i consider it is for our own debt now...$17 trillion...that's what they tell us about...while i've heard $87 trillion in unfunded liabilities. all hail the modern jesus from the all-illinois church of the modern ju-ju.tiny finland was paying its war debt...from the second i believe, or one of their separate wars whatever...out of all those nasty europeans that hate the u.s.a. tiny finland was paying its debt...and it got to be embarrassing to the heathen yankees, and they set up some sort of exchange system for suomalainen students. hey...i just posted it on the web, so it's true! ooga oooga.the third book begins on page 325begins w/this:an old love-song of an experienced sailorthere are so many ships on sea,some do come and some do flee;yet none can be so dreadful lowthat none is found still further so.and here, our hero has been shanghaied aboard the empress of madagascarupdate, finished, 7 oct 13, monday evening, 7:25 p.m. e.s.t.good read. give it a go.
Although I took three books on holiday, this, in a 1934 edition translated from the German by Eric Sutton, was on the bookshelves of the house I was staying at...and we should always read other people’s books, so I read it. I had previously read B. Traven’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which is fun but its main interest is that it provided the source of the film. And, overall, Traven seems more interesting as an enigmatic legend than as a writer. I hadn’t even heard of The Death Ship. It is divided into 3 parts, although the last is only about 30 pages, and I found the first the most successful. Written in first person, the protagonist, an American sailor, misses his ship out of Antwerp. Abandoned, without papers, the sailor attempts to regain a legal identity: he goes to the American consul who refuses to help him because he can’t show he is an American citizen (well, he hasn’t got any papers); when the Belgium police pick him up they don’t know what to do with him (he hasn’t got any papers) and finally they send him illegally across the border into the Netherlands (he thinks he is being taken into the countryside to be shot); when the Dutch authorities eventually pick him up they don’t believe his story that the Belgians pushed him across the border (they wouldn’t do such a thing) but finally they send him back to Belgium in the same manner. And so it goes on. The American consul in Paris tells him that without evidence of his birth he does not exist. All this is coolly comical, the world as a ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare. But there are moments when this nightmare is suddenly humanized: however bureaucratic the officials are they will suddenly switch to responding to the sailor as a person rather than a problem, thereby expressing their own humanity. Politically the book could be described as expressing a sentimental Anarchism: the State, with its borders and bureaucrats and legal definitions, is the great evil. The sailor finally finds his Utopia: Spain. Here, even the police don’t move on vagrants, he is always given a meal and no one expects a man to work if he doesn’t want to. (And the book is about men: women don’t get much of a look in.) (There is an incident where the sailor is outside a prison and hears the screams of the tortured and dying, but he is told that they are Communists who want to impose the order of the State, so the sailor accepts the reason.) In the second part he is taken aboard a death-ship: the worst of ships, where none of the crew has papers and therefore can go nowhere but to another death-ship, which carries the most dubious of cargoes and will eventually be sunk for the insurance money. Much of the humour is now lost. There are long descriptions of the horrendous working conditions and the gruelling nature of the work. There are back stories of members of the crew that echo the sailor’s experiences, e.g., a German-Pole who has lost his nationality with border changes after the First World War...all this tends to be a repetition of the first part, but without the humour. The most interesting thing about this part is the way the sailor gets used to his conditions. In the first section there are a few passages where the narrator explains the way of the world, but these become longer and increasingly didactic, often dominating the text. The more the book takes itself seriously, the less serious it becomes. The root of all evil is the state and men just want to be left alone. Although I find this politically trite, more important is that Traven cannot make it anything other than thematically repetitious and shallow. (But the book’s hatred of the State shouldn’t be identified with the rhetoric of the modern libertarian right: Traven has a respect for idleness and a hatred of the boss that is antipathetic to the Right.) But, for all the limitations of the book, I am glad I came across it and read it. (The casual racism of the narrator is often startling and the book does not challenge it: the Anarchist brotherhood of man does not seem to include those of African or Asian descent.)
Do You like book The Death Ship (1991)?
The last time i caught my self searching for an epilogue that i knew it would not exist, just to find something that would make me feel better from what i had just read,was when i read 1984.By far one of the most depressing books i have ever read, the death ship is the story of a man who unable to prove his own identity after a series of unfortunate events, has no other choice than to embarg οn a coffin ship, a ship where stranded people work as sailors, people with no home and no identity.Fortunately our main hero has an overdeveloped sense of black humour, the only thing that keeps him capable of dealing with all his problems, the only thing that helps the readers find a comfort and a reason to laugh while reading that book.The first part which is an ''anthem'' for the all time classic monster of bureaucrasy is actually funny, but the second part though in which is described how living on such a boat is and all the practises that the shipping companies of that period used to apply in order to gain money from their insurances, is quite difficult not only in emotional terms but also in practical, since more than enough details of how a steamboat used to sail are depicted in it.If you want to experience in real life how our hero feels in the first part, go visit a greek public service and ask for a paper. You will remember him!
—Panagiotis
Traven's first best-seller, written in Mexico after he shipped up there in the 1920s. The first half is quite amusing actually as the narrator slyly pokes fun both at his own fecklessness and bureaucracy; the second half goes grim and gets down to the nitty-gritty of 20th century life as the author saw it.Traven's identity was a puzzle even long after he died. The discovery that he was a German national who concocted a variety of identities to fend off the curious had to wait till then. His widow, a solo mother he'd taken in late in his life, had travelled with him to Germany, where he looked up some old acquaintances, thus finally establishing - I think - who he really was. During his life he masqueraded as "Hal Croves" on the set of the filming of his novel Treasure of the Sierra Madre, pretending to be a friend of the (thought to be American) author, who was maybe Traven Torsen, of Scandinavian origin. To keep his identity secret he employed the sister of the President of Mexico as his secretary...when cornered in the 1970s in a Mexico City park, he obligingly spun a completely fictitious yarn to the credulous reporter, who duly recounted it as if it was true.Today Traven's best-known books are his "jungle novels", set in Mexico's revolutionary period 1910-1930 (it went on in fits and starts for rather a long time), along with similarly political books set elsewhere in Mexico, like Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But for me the best of his books is Bridge in the Jungle, like Treasure an implicitly rather than explicitly political book. All are worth reading.
—Steve Evans
I like sea stories, and I like stories about people who are down on their luck and downtrodden, so yeah, I was bound to like this. Some complain that it gets boring in the middle with a lot of talk about furnaces (hi, Maureen!) and boilers and such, and there definitely is a lot of time spent on the workaday drudgery of the firemen and coal-drags working in the stoke-hold of the titular ship, but I felt this was there for a reason. Traven succeeds in making you feel the backbreaking toil, the filth, and the danger of stoking the fires of an ancient, decrepit steamship. You know the old adage, "show, dont tell," well, Traven shows you how bad it is, and then he shows you some more. And then some more, just in case you're not getting the point. There is no hope here, and little happiness, but much sarcastic gallows humor, the humor of men who have no hope, who know that the world is against them and that they might as well just play the hand dealt to them. It ends obliquely and oh so bleakly...my kind of book.
—Rod
